Digital Advertising, A-to-Z
Digital advertising is the land of acronyms and technical terms. Our glossary can help you make sense of it all with definitions of the most common terminology.
A
A/B TEST
A comparative test in which an audience is split (usually in half) and two alternative solutions or features are run on each subset. It compares the performance of one solution or feature against the other.
ABOVE THE FOLD
An advertisement is considered “above the fold” if it appears within the content view frame and is immediately visible to the consumer upon loading the page or app.
ACQUISITION
Acquisition advertising is a marketing goal designed to grow an organization’s customer base, drive traffic visits or increase sales.
ACTIVE ELEMENTS
To create personalized native advertisements, design elements such as logos, calls to action, descriptions, and ratings are dynamically blended with images sourced from a product catalog.
AD EXCHANGE
An ad exchange is a technology platform that enables the purchase and sale of advertising inventory. Ad pricing is determined through real-time bidding auctions (RTB) on this neutral platform.
AD FORMATS
A specification for advertising creative often includes whether the ad will contain text, audio, or graphical content, the size of the creative, and the web-enabled device used to view the creative. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has defined standard ad formats; there are also native formats that are custom to a site.
AD LAYOUT
Banner layout refers to arranging components within a banner, such as product images, prices, descriptions, and titles.
AD TECH
Ad tech, short for “advertising technology,” is technology services that allow marketers to engage people across digital properties to achieve marketer-specified outcomes (e.g., brand awareness, engagement, consideration, conversion) and provide media owners selling & yield tools to monetize their inventory better.
ADAPTIVE CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION (ACO)
An ASTRAD AI Engine feature represents conversion optimization’s evolution. By continuously adjusting bids every hour, ACO aims to maximize client sales while meeting a Cost per Order (CPO) target.
ADAPTIVE DESIGN
Design that adapts digital content to the consumer’s device and browser.
ADDRESSABLE ADVERTISING
Advertising relies on identifiers to improve the planning, engagement, measurement, and optimization of digital advertising.
AI/ML
Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML). AI aims to automate decisions to solve complex problems that previously required a human in the loop. ML is a subset of AI that allows a machine to automatically learn from past data without programming explicitly. AI/ML effectiveness is improved with scaled, accurate, and timely data.
ALGORITHM
ASTRAD AI Engine employs algorithms to anticipate and suggest content to individuals and tactics to media owners and marketers to achieve superior results. These recommendations are based on guidelines that translate a predefined set of inputs into an output.
APP-EVENTS SDK
The App-Events Software Development Kit (SDK) is an easy-to-use developer toolkit that enables marketers to benefit from in-app events and transactions to improve their messaging and media buying strategies.
ARBITRAGE
One way to increase profit margins and reduce buyer risks is by paying publishers based on one metric (such as CPM) while selling to buyers based on a different metric (such as CPC). This strategy ensures that buyers only pay for the specific desired results (in this example, clicks).
ATTRIBUTE
A probabilistic (e.g., purchase intender) or deterministic (e.g., purchase event) piece of information linked to an identifier.
ATTRIBUTION
Marketing attribution refers to the process by which marketers attribute credit to the success of their advertising campaigns. This involves evaluating the various marketing touchpoints consumer experiences during their journey towards a specific goal, such as making a purchase. The main objective of attribution is to identify the channels and messages that had the most significant influence on the consumer’s decision to take the desired action, such as clicking on an ad or completing a conversion.
AUDIENCE
An audience segment, also known as an audience, is individuals who share common attributes or characteristics. Marketers often use audience segments to engage with consumers, allowing them to direct their limited media budgets toward those most likely to generate a positive outcome for their business.
AUDIENCE TARGETING
The practice of engaging people based on shared characteristics (typically referred to as segments) to focus limited media budgets better and deliver more relevant advertising.
AVERAGE CART
The average revenue generated by a campaign’s sales. This KPI is calculated by dividing the total income by the complete orders over a period. The average cart can be tracked for any period, but the most common is the moving monthly average.
AWARENESS
The marketing objective of awareness advertising is to enhance consumer familiarity with a brand, whether at the organizational level or for specific products and services, by highlighting their respective benefits.
B
BANNER AD
A digital advertisement displayed on a media owner’s website or digital property is commonly referred to as an online creative. Typically, a traditional display banner has a pre-defined size (300×250 pixels) and may include images and text.
BEHAVIORAL TARGETING
Behavioral targeting also called online behavioral targeting (OBA) or interest-based advertising, involves using a consumer’s previous activity to generate attributes. This can include the number of pages visited on a particular topic or interactions with content (including clicks on ads) associated with a specific brand.
BID PRICE OPTIMIZATION
The process of automatically adjusting the bid amount of a marketer for a specific impression based on various inputs that determine the value of that impression to the marketer is known as bid optimization.
BLOCKLIST
A set of IP addresses, publishers, advertisers, contexts & keywords, or products that are meant to be excluded from a campaign is known as an exclusion list.
BOUNCE TRACKING
Bounce tracking, or link tracking, involves adding parameters to URLs to transfer information across different organizations. Various supply chain partners widely use this technology for millions of websites, including authentication providers, credit card verification systems, and even Google and Facebook for tracking clicks on advertiser links within search results and ads on their digital properties. UID2 and Prebid SSO also rely on this technology to ensure that users’ opt-in preferences can be communicated across various sites they visit, even with the active interference of internet gatekeepers.
BRAND / AGENCY DSP
A third-party demand-side platform (DSP) that ASTRAD does not own does not have access to ASTRAD’s unique audiences, as ASTRAD does not make them available to customers using rival DSPs.
BRAND AFFINITY
The probability of positive sentiment towards a brand and other elements such as pages, individuals, and other brands is known as sentiment likelihood.
BRAND LIFT
Incrementality measurement is a method used to compare the difference in awareness between a group of individuals who were exposed to advertisements and a comparable control group who were not exposed to any ads.
BRAND SAFETY & FRAUD PREVENTION
Brand safety tools are used to regulate automated optimizations to ensure that a media owner’s or marketer’s standards for acceptable content are applied to the media they sell or purchase, respectively. Fraud prevention, on the other hand, refers to automated optimizations designed to eliminate non-human traffic or prevent false branding of media in which marketers advertise.
BUY
Purchasing ad space on relevant media channels at the optimal time and cost to achieve a pre-determined objective.
BUYER INDEX
ASTRAD utilizes AI-driven propensity models that enable additional engagement opportunities with commerce media. The Buyer Index uses shopper intent data mapped to contextual signals to enhance marketing outcomes.
C
CALIFORNIA CONSUMER PRIVACY ACT (CCPA)
California Consumer Privacy Act is a law that secures new privacy rights for California consumers.
CALL TO ACTION (CTA)
A call-to-action button is a specific button in an advertisement that encourages the consumer to click through, often featuring text such as “Buy Now.”
CAMPAIGN
In ASTRAD DSP, a marketer configures a set of creative, budget, and engagement tactics to achieve a desired outcome, as measured by a predetermined set of metrics.
CAPPING
Frequency capping limits the number of times (frequency) a specific visitor is exposed to a particular advertisement.
CATALOG FEED
An advertiser’s product inventory is a list of products they sell. The product inventory typically includes a product’s ID, name, description, category, image URL, and the product’s URL on the brand’s website.
CHANNELS
The term “media channel” refers to the platform where the advertiser intends to reach their target audience with their message. A media channel could combine various ad formats with specific devices, such as a video ad displayed on a social media platform and viewed on a mobile device. Examples of online media channels include search engines, display networks, mobile apps, social media platforms, and video streaming services.
CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the percentage of people who click on an ad after seeing it. It is calculated by dividing the number of clicks on an ad by the number of impressions served.
CLICK/CLICK THROUGH
A click occurs when a consumer interacts with an ad and is directed to a specific endpoint, such as an advertiser’s website.
COHORT AUDIENCES
Google’s Cohort audiences are assigned to browsers based on their browsing behaviors, with each browser belonging to a single, mutually exclusive segment known as a Cohort. These Cohorts are designed to be large groups, making them unsuitable for measurement or optimization purposes using audience segmentation.
COMMERCE AUDIENCE
ASTRAD’s audience allows advertisers to connect with potential customers who have shown interest in particular categories or brands or exhibit specific socio-demographic characteristics. For further information, please refer to our resources.
COMMERCE DATA
ASTRAD’s collection of consumer purchases and interest data offers valuable insight into their behavior and decision-making processes. This commerce data set includes various information, such as demographics, location, ad clicks, viewed pages, products browsed and purchased, offline sales, and contextual data sourced from publishers, such as URLs, categories, and keywords.
COMMERCE DATA COLLECTIVE
Clients can access the shared catalog, transaction, and interest data to enhance and optimize engagement across the First Party Media Network by opting in. This exclusive data is only accessible through ASTRAD’s DSP and is anonymized. Each marketer contributes no more than 1% of the data, allowing every advertiser to receive more than they provide.Clients can access the shared catalog, transaction, and interest data to enhance and optimize engagement across the First Party Media Network by opting in. This exclusive data is only accessible through ASTRAD’s DSP and is anonymized. Each marketer contributes no more than 1% of the data, allowing every advertiser to receive more than they provide.
COMMERCE INSIGHTS
This solution merges media metrics with organic commerce data to impact retail media and can even assist in optimizing content and merchandising choices.
COMMERCE INTENT
A group of individuals who are expected or predicted to buy a particular product or service.
COMMERCE MEDIA
Commerce advertising is a form of digital advertising that utilizes commerce data and intelligence to assist marketers and media owners in achieving commerce-related objectives.
COMMERCE MEDIA PLATFORM
This refers to ASTRAD’s comprehensive advertising platform, which includes both a demand-side platform (DSP) and a supply-side platform (SSP). It is fueled by the world’s most extensive collection of commerce data, enabling marketers and media owners to effectively target audiences and generate revenue from advertising that drives commerce outcomes.
COMPETITION WIN %
The percentage of impressions a marketer successfully secures in a programmatic market through targeting is known as impression share.
COMPOSER
DCO+ incorporates Composer as an essential element, enabling the Creative Services team to create a digital design framework customized to each client’s brand guidelines.
CONNECTED TV (CTV)
A piece of electronic equipment through which advertisements are displayed during TV shows and movies that are streamed via over-the-top (OTT) services on any internet-enabled television (connected TV) or streaming devices (such as Apple TV, Amazon Firestick, or Roku).
CONSENT MANAGEMENT PLATFORM (CMP)
A Consent Management Platform (CMP) is a tool publishers utilize to request, receive, store, and update user consent regarding their online tracking, targeting, and sharing preferences. CMPs usually feature a user-friendly interface enabling users to allow vendors to access their online footprint easily.
CONSIDERATION
Consideration advertising aims to attract potential customers to engage with a brand and discover its advantages.
CONSUMER
A consumer is an individual who browses the internet, views and engages with advertisements, and may be interested in purchasing a product.
CONTEXTS
The context of an ad placement refers to the environment in which the ad appears. Standard contextual signals include the URL, category, text, and images surrounding the ad.
CONTEXTUAL TARGETING
Contextual targeting matches advertisements to a specific web page based on its content, allowing marketers to display ads to groups of consumers with similar interests and online behavior.
CONVERSION RATE (CR)
The ratio of completed outcomes to clicks.
COOKIE
A cookie is a tiny piece of text saved on the user’s device and allows web servers to recognize and enhance the user’s browsing experience on the internet.
COST OF SALES (COS)
The cost of sales (COS) is a metric that measures the efficiency of a marketing campaign. It’s calculated by dividing the total cost of the campaign by the revenue generated from it. In simpler terms, COS represents the percentage of income that goes towards covering the cost of advertising.
Formula: COS = (Total ad spend / Revenue generated) x 100COS = Ad spend / Revenue driven
COST PER ACQUISITION (CPA)
The cost per acquisition (CPA) is the expense a marketer incurs for each desired action a consumer takes, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or completing a booking. It is computed by dividing the total cost by the total number of conversions.
COST PER CLICK (CPC)
The price a marketer pays each time a consumer clicks on your ad. Calculated as total cost divided by total clicks.
COST PER INSTALL (CPI)
The price a marketer pays for each app install. Calculated as total cost divided by total installs.
COST PER LEAD (CPL)
The price a marketer pays for each lead generated, usually identified as a form fill where contact information is obtained. Calculated as total cost divided by total leads.
COST PER MILLE (CPM)
Cost per thousand impressions (Cost Per Mille). The amount a buyer pays publisher partners on a CPM basis: for every thousand impressions delivered on the partner’s website. (Revenue/Impressions) x 1000.
COST PER ORDER (CPO)
The average price a marketer pays for each order. Calculated as total cost divided by total number of orders.
COST PER VIEW (CPV)
The price a marketer pays each time a video ad is viewed. Usually, a consumer must watch a minimum duration on the video ad for it to count as a completed view. Calculated as total cost divided by total completed views.
CREATIVE STUDIO
Custom creative built by Criteo Creative Consultants using Studio.
CRITEO DSP
Criteo’s demand-side platform that that optimizes the buying of digital media. Customers can plan, buy, personalize, measure & analyze all of their campaigns against any KPI and outcome. Customers of Criteo DSP can leverage Criteo unique commerce audiences, which are not available in rival DSPs.
CRITEO EXCHANGE
The Criteo Exchange is a neutral marketplace for sellers and buyers to match demand to supply – by neutral it does not favor one side over the other, similar to stock exchanges. Criteo’s Ad Exchange differentiates from others by providing conditional access to the First Party Media Network and Commerce Data Collective, to those who choose to participate.
CRITEO SSP
Criteo’s sell-side platform enables media owners to monetize data and media inventory. Customers can manage their yield and benefit from over a hundred DSPs, including the Criteo DSP. Criteo SSP customers get access to Criteo’s Buyer Index data to further improve their yield optimization.
CUSTOM AUDIENCE
An audience that is built specifically for a customer or a single use case.
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
Customer acquisition is the act of gaining new customers. It includes any method used, both offline and online, to find new customers and encourage them to make a purchase. Common customer acquisition tactics include cold calls and direct mail, and online tactics like email, social media, content marketing, SEO, paid display, and paid search ads.
CUSTOMER CATALOG FILES
Also referred to as Catalog Feed. Advertiser’s product inventory. A product in the feed will typically include a product’s ID, name, description, category, image URL, and the product’s URL on the brand’s website.
CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM (CDP)
Customer Data Platform (CDP) is similar to Data Management Platform (DMP) but often contains PII (Personally Identifiable Information, i.e. directly-identifiable identity data), which can be used for email, etc.
CUSTOMER TARGETING
Also referred to as Catalog Feed. Advertiser’s product inventory. A product in the feed will typically include a product’s ID, name, description, category, image URL, and the product’s URL on the brand’s websiteCustomer targeting is the act of reaching out to a portion of your customer list to re-engage them and drive sales.
D
DATA MANAGEMENT PLATFORM (DMP)
Software-based solution that aggregates and processes data feeds that provide insights into audiences and targeting for buyers and sellers of ads.
DATA WAREHOUSE
A data warehouse is a large database often fed from multiple data stores.
DEAL ID
A Deal Identifier is a unique number that usually consists of 19 characters and is generated by the publisher’s supply-side platform (or an ad server) for a programmatic direct deal (i.e. private auctions for private marketplaces, or preferred deals, or guaranteed deals). Deal ID enables media buyers to identify publishers in the auction and buy their premium inventories based on certain pre-negotiated terms.
DEDUPLICATED REACH
Counting unique households or individuals reached by advertising.
DEMAND-SIDE PLATFORM (DSP)
Technology platform used by marketers to achieve outcomes via targeting tactics, a centralized system for campaign management & reporting, plus access to wide scale of inventory.
DEVICES
The internet-enabled hardware (e.g., PC, tablets, mobiles, TV), that people use to view and interact with digital media, and purchase products and services.
DIGITAL SHELF
The online equivalent of the brick-and-mortar shopping experience. The digital shelf is where a brand’s product is displayed online, and can include search results and product detail pages on retailer websites and apps, marketplaces, and other ecommerce channels.
DIRECTLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION
An identifier that links or is intended to link to a person’s directly-identifiable offline identity. Examples include a full name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, bank account number, passport number, or email address. Also called Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
Visual ads placed on websites, social media networks, or apps. They are typically image, text, or video banner ads that when clicked on, take a user to a website or landing page.
DYNAMIC ADS
An ad automatically personalized for the consumer viewing it in order to create additional engagement and conversions.
DYNAMIC BUDGET REALLOCATION
Automated adjustments among various tactics within a campaign’s pre-defined budget.
DYNAMIC CREATIV
Responsive ad type that leverages the product catalog to dynamically optimize the content and messaging, delivering a personalized experience to each consumer.
DYNAMIC CREATIVE OPTIMIZATION+ (DCO+)
Criteo’s ad technology that in real-time matches the ideal creative template, and elements within it (e.g., text, image, links), based on data about the viewer and their current environment (e.g., geographic location, connection speed, screen size). This product is only available as an optional add-on to Criteo DSP customers.
E
EFFECTIVE COST PER MILLE (ECPM)
A relevant KPI selected by the advertiser (CTR/CR/COS) divided by impressions delivered, regardless of the pricing model used to purchase the impressions (CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPCV, etc). Example for a typical CPC charging model: eCPM = (CPC x clicks / impressions) x 1000.
ENRICHED CATALOG
A catalog of products from a partner with an improved quality of data per additional fields of rich media (called enrichments) such as product videos. It has a version composed of an import date and an enrichment date.
EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT
Tools to enable marketers to improve the matching of content to people interacting with their digital properties.
F
FIRST-PARTY COOKIE (1P COOKIE)
A small text file stored on the user’s computer that is created by the website the user is currently visiting. Accessing this cookie while the visitor is on another website is a ‘third-party” use case.
FIRST-PARTY DATA (1P DATA)
First-party data is information that a company can collect from their own sources. Usually, information about customers from both online and offline sources, such as the company’s website, app, CRM, social media or surveys is first party data.
FIRST-PARTY MEDIA NETWORK (1PMN)
Criteo 1st-Party Media Network is the pipe that connects buyers and sellers via a trusted network of direct first-party relationships, allowing for scaled, addressable advertising across the open web.
FLEDGE
Google’s First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment (FLEDGE) is Google’s proposal to measure the effectiveness of Google’s TURTLEDOVE auction mechanism as being a viable replacement for the interoperable identifiers that support the decentralized, open web. FLEDGE is based on concepts from the TURTLEDOVE proposal (i.e. it operates by making ad auction decisions in the browser itself, rather than at the ad server level), but includes feedback from other proposals, including Criteo’s SPARROW proposal.
FLOC
Proposal relies on the Chrome browser to collect and process people’s behavior across various web sites and assign each browser to a single Cohort audience. According to GitHub, “The browser uses machine learning algorithms to develop a cohort based on the sites that an individual visits. The algorithms might be based on the URLs of the visited sites, on the content of those pages, or other factors.”
FREQUENCY CAP
The maximum amount of times a given ad will be shown to a unique user within a specified time period.
FULL-FUNNEL MARKETING
A strategy that addresses the full shopper journey and incorporates objectives for all stages of the purchase funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
G
GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION (GDPR)
The EU GDPR harmonizes data privacy laws across Europe. It protects the privacy of EU citizens and applies to all companies collecting or processing personal data on individuals in the EU, even if not established in the EU.
GEOTARGETING
The controls to serve ads to consumers based on location.
GUARANTEED DEALS
A type of programmatic deal based on a guaranteed volume of impressions sold at a fixed price and for a guaranteed budget.
H
HASHED EMAIL
Encrypted version of an email that enables cross-device experiences. Often organizations add a salt to the hashing mechanism to transform the email into more privacy-by-design pseudonymous identifier. Usually referred to as HEM. MD5 and SHA256 are the most used hashing methods.
HEAD TO HEAD TEST (H2H)
A period during which an advertiser will run two competing solutions at the same time to assess which one performs better.
HEADER BIDDING
Header bidding is an advanced programmatic technique wherein publishers offer inventory to multiple ad exchanges simultaneously before making calls to their publisher ad servers.
HTML
An acronym for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which is the coding language for rendering interactive content on open web.
I
IDENTITY DATA & RESOLUTION
Process of collecting and matching identifiers across devices and touchpoints to build a cohesive, omnichannel view of individual customers, enabling marketers to deliver personalized, contextually relevant messaging throughout the customer journey.
IDENTITY GRAPH
Identity Graph links identifiers across devices, browsers and apps. Prospects that are not yet customers or shoppers are linked to identifiers the same way as existing customers.
IMPRESSION (OR DISPLAY)
An opportunity to serve an ad to a consumer on a digital device.
IN-MARKET AUDIENCE
People who are likely in the market to purchase a given product or service. See Commerce Intent.
IN-MOMENT CONTEXT
Criteo uses scaled Commerce Intent data to match to a likely product / consumer / page ranking. Using this technique allows Criteo to serve relevant ads based on page context.
INCREMENTALITY
Incrementality is an advanced method to measure marketing effectiveness that seeks to show that those that purchased did so because they were exposed to advertising content (i.e. “attribution”).
INSERTION ORDER (IO)
The contract signed by an advertiser/agency to validate a new budget for an advertising campaign. It is signed by the advertiser.
INTERACTIONS
Touchpoints of when a consumer sees, clicks, visits a store, or other activity related to the marketing and monetization efforts of our customers.
INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU (IAB)
A trade body organization that helps sets standards and guidelines for digital advertising.
INTEREST MAP
Criteo Shopper Graph data collective that associates people’s activity and transaction patterns to standard product, category, and brand identifiers.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
A process used by media owners to package and monetize the ad space in their digital properties.
K
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR (KPI)
The target or result that you want to achieve. In other words, it’s how you measure the success of a campaign. Common KPIs are ROAS, COS, and CPL and CPV .
L
LAST-TOUCH ATTRIBUTION
See “Attribution“. A widespread type of attribution model, that assigns 100% credit to the final touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions.
LIFETIME VALUE (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a metric to capture the net profit contributed by a customer. Companies aim to ensure a high CLV through marketing techniques.
LIQUID DESIGN
Liquid ad layouts are based on percentages of the current browser window’s size. They remain consistent in size and relative page weight regardless of who is viewing the page.
LOOK-ALIKE
An AI-driven audience scoring process to identify similar audiences to an initial segment (called “seed data”), that is frequently a marketer’s existing first party data.
LOOKALIKE FINDER
A core feature of the Criteo DSP. It creates audiences called Similar Audiences by using AI and the Criteo Shopper Graph to find new consumers with similar characteristics to a company’s best customer.
M
MANAGEMENT CENTER (FORMERLY CPP)
Criteo’s performance-monitoring interface used both internally and externally to track the daily performance of advertisers and publishers and to monitor/change budgets and CPC of our advertisers.
MARKETER
A marketer engages and grows customers for their organization’s products and services by matching content to desirable audiences. The function of marketing encompasses audience definition (who & where), content creation (what), budget and bid price allocation across media (how much), and content matching tactics (what & when) to drive improved outcomes (how well).
MEASURE
Media measurement quantifies the exposure and relative success of advertising campaigns against the goals and KPIs set out in the planning phase.
MEASUREMENT DATA
Data derived from analyzing the performance of marketing campaigns across the marketing funnel. Some of the data points captured across the marketing funnel include; Impressions, page views, clicks, unique visits, leads, sales/purchases, repeat purchases.
MEDIA PLAN
Media planning is the process by which marketers determine who to engage, where to reach them, when to message, and how frequently to maximize engagements and ROI.
MINDSHARE (MARKETING TERM)
Percent of an advertiser’s pre-defined audience that is exposed to at least one ad. See Reach.
MOBILE ADS
Standardized ad units designed for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets.
MOBILE ADVERTISING IDENTIFIERS (MAIDS)
Unique and anonymous identifiers provided by a mobile device’s operating system. Apple plans to change the usage of its mobile identifiers (IDFA) on Apple devices to ask users to “opt-in” to any rival apps not controlled by Apple before allowing them to receive the IDFA. Note, Apple does not apply these same policies to its own apps.
MONETIZATION
Monetization is the process of turning an asset into revenue, for Media Owners this can be ad space on their digital properties, their data or converting visitors into customers.
MULTI-TOUCH ATTRIBUTION
See “Attribution“. Type of attribution models that assign credit to multiple touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that precede sales or conversions. Linear or time-decay are typical multi-touch attribution models (as opposed to last-click or first-click models that give credit to a single touchpoint).
N
NATIVE ADS
Ads that look and feel like the surrounding content in an attempt to improve consumers’ experience by letting ads blend into the content backdrop. Ads on Pinterest (such as Promoted Pins) are a good example of native ads.
NETWORK
Criteo’s direct publisher and supply relationships ensure the most efficient paths to achieve marketer outcomes.
O
OMNICHANNEL RETAIL
Refers to a retail environment selling products across online and offline channels and creating a consistent customer experience across those sales channels. Typical channels include online retailers, marketplaces, social channels and brick-and-mortar stores.
ONLINE VIDEO (OLV)
OLV is a video ad format commonly referred to in reference to video advertising on web and mobile app devices (as opposed to Connected TV devices).
OPEN INTERNET
Also called the Open Web, which refers to digital publishing and advertising outside walled gardens, such as search and social platforms.
OPT-OUT
A user-signaled preference to no longer receive behaviorally targeted ads. Users can opt-out of receiving behaviorally targeted ads from Criteo on or our Privacy page after clicking on the blue ‘i’ icon on each Criteo banner.
OUTCOME
An “outcome” achieves one or more success metrics (aka “KPI”) that our Marketer and Media Owner customers specify .
OUTCOME OPTIMIZATION
Criteo’s buying solutions are powered by AI to help continuously improve channel, budget, bid, audience and messaging to achieve superior outcomes.
OVER-THE-TOP (OTT)
OTT is any video content “over the top of a cable box”. It is an umbrella term that includes both CTV and OLV advertising. Includes services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Sling. This term is considered antiquated and isn’t used in Criteo vocabulary.
P
PASSBACK
A media owner’s ability to repurpose an unfilled impression as a buying opportunity for the next buyer in their waterfall. This is an antiquated and largely inefficient way of running a media owner ad stack, but still exists today.
PERSONALIZE
Personalized marketing uses data to deliver more relevant messages to a desired audience.
PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION (PII)
An identifier that links or is intended to link to a person’s directly-identifiable offline identity. Examples include a full name, Social Security number, driver’s license number, bank account number, passport number, or email address. Also called Directly Identifiable Information.
POST-CLICK SALES
Purchase made by a consumer on a website or mobile app within a certain period of time following the user clicking on an ad. This period of time varies by but is typically a maximum of 30 days.
PREBID SSO
The ecosystem’s leading open-source notice and choice framework to generate responsible addressable media identifiers and people’s default privacy signals associated with them. The Prebid solution enables people to signal their preferences with a logged out identifier and optionally supports logged in identifiers to synchronize preferences across devices.
PREDICTED CLICK-THROUGH RATE
Expected click-through rate (CTR) for each possible impression that the Criteo AI Engine computes.
PREDICTIVE BIDDING
AI-driven algorithm that adjusts the bid based on the current context and right time for each consumer.
PREFERRED DEALS
A feature, via Deal ID, that allows media owners to carve out certain inventory for certain buyers, usually at a fixed minimum price.
PREMIUM AD INVENTORY
Ad inventory that is considered to be of high quality and is therefore valued at a higher price.
PRIVACY MESH
A privacy-by-design method to ingest first party data. Criteo’s Privacy Mesh defines provenance, purpose, and governs usage, storage and auditing for any data contributed to the Criteo Commerce Data Platform. We never re-identify, sell or leak Customer data.
PRIVATE MARKETPLACE (PMP)
A Private Marketplace (PMP) refers to the real-time auction of publishers’ ad inventory in an invite-only set up with a selected number of advertisers. PMP is an invite-only auction where a publisher invites advertisers to bid on its inventory. Due to this “invite-only” feature, this auction is termed as a private auction.
PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
An AI-driven algorithm to improve the match of digital content for specific products based on the shopper’s specific on-site behavior such as navigation, recency, and the types of other products browsed.
PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING
Automated ad buying in real time through a software solution as opposed to the traditional method via phone, email or fax.
PROGRAMMATIC DIRECT
See Programmatic Advertising. Programmatic advertising is called “Programmatic Direct” when the deal for buying and selling of this inventory has been made directly between the publisher and advertiser without the involvement of any middlemen. It encompasses programmatic guaranteed deals, preferred deals and private marketplaces (PMP).
PROGRAMMATIC MEDIATION
See Programmatic Advertising. A platform that allows media owners (typically app developers) to plug in multiple demand sources (historically ad networks) to compete for their inventory, usually in a waterfall setup.
PSEUDONYMOUS IDENTIFIER
A form of identifier where an organization has appropriate technical or operational processes in place to keep this identifier distinct from people’s identity. See the antonym Personally Identifiable Information.
PUBLISHER
A website that publishes content (news, etc.) and which often monetizes its traffic by selling ad placements.
PUBLISHER MONETIZATION
How media owners leverage their data and content to drive revenue through advertising.
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REACH
Share of the marketer’s audience exposed to at least one ad.
REACH & PERFORMANCE FORECASTS
Criteo’s AI-driven estimates the scale of people possible to reach and the outcomes to likely expect for a given campaign based on pre-defined metrics.
REAL-TIME AUDIENCE (RTA)
Protocol invented by Criteo that allows us to communicate with the media owner’s ad server to determine whether to show ads to the consumer currently browsing the page.
REAL-TIME BIDDING (RTB)
Buying and selling of ad inventory through a programmatic exchange or software solution. Each ad impression is sold to the highest bidder in real time, in the split second it takes a potential customer’s browser or app to load an ad unit.
REAL-TIME CREATIVE OPTIMIZATION (RTCO)
A sub-feature of DCO+, Criteo’s Real-Time Creative Optimization instantly calculates which set of predefined visual elements will be the most engaging to a specific consumer at any given time in any given context.
RECOMMENDATION ENGINE
Criteo’s AI-driven algorithm surfaces the most relevant items to a particular consumer.
RENDERER
Proprietary technology that allows us to render fully optimized ads on the media owner’s page in real time, enabling billions of ad variations to be available within a given campaign.
RESELLER PROGRAM
Allows retailers to resell Criteo Dynamic Retargeting to their brand partners and allows both parties to reach shoppers with co-branded, dynamic ads delivered across top media owners.
RETAIL ADS
Retail advertising is the process by which retailers use store advertising (online and offline) to drive awareness and interest towards their products to generate sales from their target audience. Through advertising, a retailer attempts to influence their audience to drive a specific marketing objective.
RETAIL MEDIA
A discipline that includes the buying and selling of advertising within retailer websites and apps. The most common ad format is the sponsored product ad, usually shown on search results, category, and/or product detail pages.
RETARGETING
Also called Remarketing, the display of ads to people who have previously interacted with first-party digital web content (e.g. visited a website or engaged with a mobile app).
RETENTION
Customer retention is a marketing goal designed to engage current or previous customers, often by encouraging continued use of an organization’s products or services.
RETURN ON ADVERTISING SPEND (ROAS)
Shows how much revenue you make for every dollar of ad spend. ROAS is expressed as a ratio, like 2:1.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)
Digital marketing ROI is usually calculated as Revenue/Cost. Cost usually means initial investment, but also cost of an ad campaign. ROI = 1/COS. In many cases, ROI is equivalent to Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
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SALES
When a consumer makes a purchase of the desired product or service.
SAME-DEVICE MATCH
Links different IDs from different applications or browsers on the same device, such as linking a web cookie to a mobile advertising ID.
SECOND-PRICE AUCTION
Mechanism allowing the highest bidder to win, while paying the second-highest bid plus a penny. Encourages buyers to bid their true value, as their paid price will always be equal to or lower than their bid. Second-price auctions are largely being phased out in favor of First-Price Auctions.
SELF-SERVICE PLATFORM
Platform with a front end UI that allows marketers to configure and run campaigns and media owners to set parameters on their inventory and check yield.
SEQUENCED UX
A storytelling technique that allows a marketer customer to define the frequency and order in which different messages are shown.
SHOPPER GRAPH
The Criteo Shopper Graph connects online and offline shopper IDs across devices, browsers, apps, and other environments for a more holistic view of each user, helping to boost sales, product visibility, and profits, by harnessing the collective power of tens of thousands of actively participating advertisers, brands, publishers, and retailers.
SHOWROOMING
Shoppers visiting the store to find, try, and gather information on the products but eventually buying online.
SIMILAR AUDIENCES
Similar Audiences are audiences that look like the first-party seed data, used by marketers to extend reach. Criteo’s Similar Audiences are the output of Criteo’s Lookalike AI scoring.
SITE OPTIMIZATION
Criteo’s creative optimization technology that in real-time matches the ideal template, and elements within it (e.g., text, image, links), based on data about the viewer and their current environment (e.g., geographic location, connection speed, screen size).
SPARROW
SPARROW stands for “Secure Private Advertising Remotely Run On Webserver.” Criteo proposed SPARROW to enable audience targeting in Chrome as an alternative to Google’s TURTLEDOVE proposal, some of which have been incorporated into FLEDGE.
STATIC AD
Unlike dynamic banners, the content of static banners is pre-prepared.
SUPPLY-PATH OPTIMIZATION (SPO)
Process in which multiple variables are assessed to drive buyers towards the most efficient buying path. This process reduces the number of intermediaries in the supply-chain until each is adding value.
SUPPLY-SIDE PLATFORM
Yield optimization tool that publishers’ rely on to optimize the yield of their indirect sold inventory. SSPs act as an aggregator of inventory for media buying solutions. Service options (self, managed, hybrid) for all technology does not change the name of the software accessed by the hands-on-keyboard.
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TAGGED USER
A user who visited an advertiser’s website whom Criteo identified with a tag (i.e. usually a cookie, but the tag infrastructure can be extended to other forms of identifiers and data collection).
THIRD-PARTY COOKIE (3P COOKIE)
A cookie that is created by domains other than the one a user is visiting directly. 3P cookies store cross-organization addressable identifiers that help improve marketers engagement, measurement and optimization.
THIRD-PARTY DATA (3P DATA)
Data sold by a partner. 3P data is used to enhance and scale audiences.
THIRD-PARTY SSP
A SSP not owned by Criteo. We make our advertising demand available to media owners by integrating our buy-side solution into these other sell-side solutions.
TRADE MARKETING
A B2B marketing strategy focused on wholesalers, retailers and distributors rather than consumers. Its goal is to increase demand from supply chain partners and to push products in front of consumers. Trade Marketing budgets are shifting to online. Trade Marketing is wider than retail media as it can be both offline & online (e.g. retail media is the most typical channel of online trade marketing).
TRIGGERED MESSAGING
A rule set that delivers media based on specific consumer activity, often within a specific time after an event (e.g., send thank you email 24-hours after purchase, or send reminder ad banner 24-hours after an abandoned cart).
TURTLEDOVE
TURTLEDOVE (“Two Uncorrelated Requests, Then Locally-Executed Decision On Victory”) proposal attempts to enable consumer retargeting without any marketers receiving any identifier. It operates by making ad auction decisions in the browser itself, rather than at the ad server level. Google has suggested measuring the effectiveness of TURTLEDOVE proposal under the FLEDGE project.
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UNIQUE VISITOR
Counting website visitors on a unique level. When a person visits a site or app, the individual is counted once, no matter how many times or pages the person visits, thus creating a better idea of how many people are visiting.
UNIVERSAL CATALOG
The uniformed and enriched catalog of products that is cross partner and is composed of the last enriched catalog of each partner. It evolves continuously with time. It’s important for Marketers to maintain a normalized catalog, as it is used to drive personalization and optimization.
UPLIFT
Uplift is the incremental impact of a treatment (i.e. showing an ad). It is measurable via A/B testing.
USER
An individual with access to the Internet. A user can access the Internet through multiple browsers or devices, and thus have multiple cookies/user IDs.
USER ID
A token attributed to a technical identifier, such as a cookie or device ID, and specific to a given browser or device.
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VIDEO COMPLETION RATE (VCR)
VCR is a widespread KPI for video campaigns, expressed as a percentage. It is the ratio between the number of completed views and the number of exposed consumers. Usually, a consumer must watch a minimum duration on the video ad for it to count as a completed view.
VIEWABLE ADVERTISING
Viewable advertising is a measure of whether a given advert could actually be seen by a human being, as opposed to being out of view or served as the result of automated activity. It also covers how long a certain ad was visible and viewed by a consumer. The industry-standard usually requires at least 50% pixels of the ad in the browser space for at least 1 second of time (2 seconds usually for video).
VISITS
When a consumer who has seen an advert goes to the desired pages or store to get more information.
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WALLED GARDENS
A closed / black-box online environment where advertisers have less access to customer data and have less control over how to measure success. Facebook, Google, Amazon are the best examples of Walled Gardens.
WEBROOMING
Shoppers gathering product information online to decide which products to buy but then going to the store to make the purchase.
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YIELD
Ad yield is the amount of revenue you earn from your ads. In other words, it is an indicator of how successful your advertising efforts were.
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360° EXPERIENCE
A digital ad that immerses the consumer in a 360-degree experience that they can control, such as using a mouse or by moving their mobile device. An interactive format that invites consumers to have fun with your ads.
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